Ghosts of Empire

by Kwasi Kwarteng

  The issue of the death penalty revealed how out of touch the Labour government in London was with sentiment in Hong Kong. In the 1970s, despite its abolition in Britain, the death penalty still existed in Hong Kong and, although the Governor and his predecessor had commuted every death sentence since the late 1960s, ‘public opinion there [was] still strongly in favour of its being applied’.14 In 1975, the Foreign Office had noticed that there was ‘no sign that public pressure in Hong Kong for the implementation of death sentences is yet diminishing’ and capital punishment was so popular that the Executive Council accepted that ‘they would be unwise to press their proposal that the death penalty in Hong Kong should be suspended’.15

  The feelings of the left wing of the Labour Party were well articulated by the Reverend John Gingell, the self-styled Industrial Adviser to the Bishop of Derby, who wrote the Foreign Office a series of letters on the issue of Hong Kong in the mid-1970s. Gingell had been a member of the Labour Party for many years and was concerned that ‘Hong Kong continues to be ruled as a colony with no democratic involvement on the part of its citizens,’ and that a Labour government had ‘no business maintaining colonial anachronisms’. The observation of the pragmatic Foreign Office was more sensitive to the realities of the situation in Hong Kong itself: ‘Gingell seems to assume that the people in Hong Kong would welcome a more democratic Government and that the Chinese government would also prefer a democracy to a colonial regime in Hong Kong.’ The idealism of the Labour Party faithful contrasted with the pragmatic realism of the British Foreign Office, and directly contradicted the views of the Governor, as he sat in his study back in Government House.16

  There still remained some political activists in Hong Kong who were more committed to the ideal of democratic participation than the British officials. These activists were people like Brook Bernacchi, the chairman of the Hong Kong Reform Club, who had been beating the drum for constitutional reform since the 1950s. At the beginning of 1978 he wrote eagerly to David Owen, Britain’s young Foreign Secretary, that the results of a survey showed that 50 per cent of the adult population of Hong Kong ‘positively want a measure of elected representation’ to the Legislative Council, and that this proportion would rise to 62 per cent if the survey were confined to those aged eighteen to thirty-four. The Reform Club warned the British government that ‘if the voice of the people is not taken heed of now’ there could be ‘disturbances’. Such threats, however, did little to convince London of the need for reform. Bernacchi and his associates had been saying the same thing for thirty years, and their arguments could be rebutted in a matter of minutes by the well-trained mandarins of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As one official observed, ‘there is clearly a difference between being in favour of something and positively wanting it’. This was demonstrated by the fact that ‘only half of those in favour of elections say that they would be likely to vote if elections were to be held’. The old argument of Hong Kong apathy was wheeled out once again to prevent genuine democratic reform. The clincher was, of course, the attitude of China. As 1997 approached, the British Foreign Office was only too well aware of the need to keep Beijing happy. ‘The present system is understood and accepted by the Chinese Government and any change would be bound to arouse their suspicions.’17

  The efforts of the Reform Club were politely rebuffed; they were simply told that ‘although there are no plans to introduce elections to the Legislative Council, we are grateful to you for keeping us informed of your findings which have been studied with great interest’. This formula of words was a polite diplomatic expression of exasperated contempt. Denys Roberts, the Chief Secretary of Hong Kong, who in 1978 was appointed chief justice by MacLehose, concluded this episode with a firm rejection of democracy in the colony. The people of Hong Kong, he argued, were ‘indifferent’ and there ‘was no substantial tradition of the democratic process as we know it’. The argument that there was ‘no substantial tradition’ could be applied in every country in the world where democracy did not exist: it simply justified prevailing circumstances. To compound this bureaucratic conservatism, Roberts also said that there was ‘a fairly widespread view that the boat should not be rocked’ at this time. The people of Hong Kong, in his rather complacent judgement, were ‘content not to have elections on any substantial scale, and would not welcome the uncertainties that would accompany them’.18

  The background of international politics had, by 1978, shifted against the democratic movement in Hong Kong. With the death of Mao and the accession of Deng Xiaoping, a new era of economic liberalization had begun in China, which was accompanied by friendlier relations with the West, coupled with a more pragmatic attitude to Hong Kong. In the 1960s, Beijing had accused the British of hypocrisy because they had not let the people of Hong Kong rule themselves, but by the late 1970s the Chinese were anxious for the old order to remain. Beijing’s greater tolerance of colonial rule was reflected in the British press, which observed with delight the ‘unprecedented toasting of the Queen’s health by China’s unofficial “ambassador” to Hong Kong’ at the Chinese National Day Celebration in October 1978; Bank of China executives, it was also noticed, no longer entertained their Western counterparts in the workers’ canteen in the basement, but took them to one of the ‘modern American-run hotels’ in Hong Kong.19

  The Chinese on the mainland were only too well aware of the advantages derived from Hong Kong business, and, as 1997 loomed ever larger on the horizon, they were particularly anxious to preserve the colony’s prosperity. A group of Hong Kong businessmen, on a visit to mainland China at the end of 1977, were told to ‘work for the prosperity of Hong Kong’ and that they should be ‘at ease’. They were also entreated, ‘don’t sell your property and go elsewhere’. At this time, Taiwan had become a bigger concern for China than Hong Kong, and Gordon Wu, a major property developer and a member of the business delegation, was told that ‘China would settle the Taiwan problem first before it decides what to do with Hong Kong’.20 China was also eager to purchase equipment and technology from the West to strengthen ‘her economy and military capacity’. The new détente between the West and China made any progress on the issue of democracy for Hong Kong unlikely. The point of which everyone was conscious, in the late 1970s, was that any abrupt change to the way in which Hong Kong had been governed for nearly 150 years would upset Beijing, and would inevitably increase uncertainty immediately before the colony was handed over. Even the Labour government concerned itself only with trade union representation and not with actual democracy. Genuine democracy in Hong Kong was simply not a consideration that absorbed many people’s interest: Beijing did not want it, the government in London was indifferent, while British civil servants in London and Hong Kong were decidedly against the idea, as were the Governor and most of the business interests in Hong Kong. In the late 1970s, the pro-democracy in Hong Kong movement, if it could be described in such terms, consisted only of a few radical democrats in the Hong Kong Reform Club and the ideological democrats among the left of the Labour Party in Britain.

  The unspoken alliance between London and Beijing was further strengthened by a perception in London that Hong Kong itself was of very little value to Britain any more. ‘Hong Kong’, wrote W. E. Quantrill, a Foreign Office official, in 1978, ‘is no longer of crucial importance to us: if it did not exist, we should not now need to invent it.’ Obviously, Britain could not ‘simply abandon the territory and its population’, but an understanding with the Chinese would be possible ‘before 1985, and possibly as early as 1980 or 1981’. The assumption was that ‘the People’s Republic of China will continue to be ruled by the sort of rational, pragmatic men who have emerged as the country’s leaders since the death of Mao Tse Tung’. Agreement with the Chinese was therefore extremely likely since China had ‘turned away’ from the ‘extremism’ of Chairman Mao. The main difficulty in diplomatic relations with China concerning Hong Kong’s fate was the need for strict secrecy. In 1978 it was clear that the ‘19
97 problem has become a fairly common subject of discussion in Hong Kong’, but ‘any leaks about our studies or intentions could do great damage’. There was an organized attempt not to say anything publicly which might incite a mood of panic among the people of Hong Kong. There was never any doubt that the colony’s future would largely be a matter for the Chinese: ‘The Chinese have let it be known in Hong Kong that Chinese interests will require the maintenance of the status quo for the foreseeable future.’ China was also backing its word ‘with concrete actions in the form of substantial investment in Hong Kong’, which had helped to create ‘a new climate of confidence in the future of the colony’.21

  The paternalism of MacLehose was actually popular in Hong Kong and in London. In the colony itself, the government boasted of its achievements in the twenty-five years since 1955; it had accomplished much in ‘providing housing, social services, education and employment for the rapidly increasing population’. The government had made primary and junior secondary education both compulsory and free; there were only minimal charges for medical treatment, while ‘more than 2 million people lived in 400,000 government provided or government subsidised flats’.22 Hong Kong was probably the most successful exercise in benevolent dictatorship in history. Its success could be measured by the vast influx of immigrants which, every year, descended upon the colony from China. During 1979, some 70,000 legal immigrants entered Hong Kong, while 90,000 illegal immigrants were arrested and repatriated to China. Perhaps the most startling fact of all was that 110,000 illegal immigrants had actually escaped arrest that year and had been merely absorbed into the population. An ‘annual influx of nearly 200,000’ people into Hong Kong could not be ‘sustained without serious social and economic consequences’. 23 These figures represented about 5 per cent of the total population of Hong Kong. It would be the equivalent of 15 million people entering the United States today, or 3 million entering Great Britain. This influx would probably have been unacceptable in most democracies, but, under the benevolent paternalism of Hong Kong, people just got on with their lives and let the government tackle the problem. Indeed, it was one of the ironies of Hong Kong’s autocratic system of government that MacLehose’s humanitarian response to the plight of the Vietnamese boat people was praised by Western liberals. By October 1979, Hong Kong was housing over 62,000 Vietnamese, and, as one historian of the colony has pointed out, there can be ‘little doubt that had Hong Kong possessed a more democratic government with its leaders answerable to elections . . . it would have been obliged to adopt sterner measures’.24

  Everything seemed to augur well for the handover in 1997. By the late 1970s, the Chinese and the British seemed to have reached a cordial understanding. Much about Hong Kong’s position was not publicly stated as no one wanted to upset the existing arrangements, but there was a tacit understanding that things would not change much in Hong Kong, which had historically enjoyed one of the most stable regimes in Asia. The contrast between the upheavals in China and the tranquil fate of Hong Kong could not have been more striking, since China had, in the period after 1841, experienced two violent revolutions, many years of civil war, the abolition of a monarchy which had lasted thousands of years, the violence of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and then, finally, an economic revolution inaugurated in 1978 in which capitalism was openly embraced. Hong Kong had meanwhile lived under the administration of twenty-five governors of similar background, who had preserved the same way of government over the entire period from 1841.

  It was the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in 1979 that began to challenge the happy understanding between China and Britain. This is not the place to chart Mrs Thatcher’s rise to power, but her gender and education at a northern grammar school made her an outsider. She had disdain for the traditions of the Foreign Office, as she believed that they had consistently failed to fight for British interests. Indeed, one of the China veterans in the Foreign Office, Percy Cradock, described her attitude towards the policy of the Foreign Office on Hong Kong as being encapsulated in the line ‘Here is another colonial outpost they want to sell off.’25 Thatcher famously saw the world in simple, even stark terms. There was good and there was evil; there was freedom and democracy, on the one side, and tyranny and oppression, on the other. The more nuanced views of the British Foreign Office were often just swept aside or ignored.

  Margaret Thatcher had first visited China as leader of the opposition in 1977. Most politicians, when they actually visited China, were entranced and fascinated by its ancient civilization and culture. Mrs Thatcher was different; she was an exception to the general rule among political and business leaders that, once in Beijing having ‘their tummies tickled, they [were] captivated by the place, seeing themselves as latter-day Marco Polo figures’. On her first visit in 1977, she found China to be a ‘rather unpleasant place governed by rather unpleasant people’.26 It was in the late 1970s that she was famously defined by her uncompromising stance against communism and was dubbed the ‘Iron Lady of the Western World’ by the state-controlled media in the Soviet Union.

  To Mrs Thatcher, the Chinese were as bad as the Russians; they were communists who practised political repression and lived under a dictatorship. They represented to her the antithesis of what she believed Britain stood for. In her mind, Britain upheld freedom and democracy, while the Chinese believed in brutal repression. At a later date, such aggressive liberalism would be dubbed neo-conservatism, and it was radically different from the more conciliatory traditions of the Foreign Office and the British Empire, as these had evolved in the twentieth century. In Hong Kong, the most consistently powerful obstacle to democracy had been the Governor’s office itself. Over 150 years, of the twenty-five or so governors who had ruled Hong Kong, only Sir Mark Young had actually initiated a plan for greater democracy, and his plans had been shelved by his successor. Thatcher’s view of the British Empire, however, bore very little relation to the reality of empire, which, as I have argued in this book, was a pragmatic affair, governed more by notions of intellectual and social elitism, deference and privilege than by any abstract ideal of democracy or political liberalism.

  Thatcher’s second visit to Beijing, as prime minister, occurred in September 1982. The date was significant because she had recently defeated Argentina in the Falklands War, which had ended in June of that year. She herself acknowledged the confidence that her recent victory in the South Atlantic had given her on the international stage. She recalled in her memoirs that ‘Britain’s standing in the world and my own had been transformed as a result of victory in the Falklands.’27 In the course of the discussions, it appeared that the British Prime Minister rejected the presumption since 1945 that all of Hong Kong really belonged to China and would be given back when the lease on the New Territories expired in 1997. As the South China Morning Post reported, citing ‘Chinese sources’, Margaret Thatcher was ‘probably the first British statesman in the past decade to dispute China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong’.28

  In the course of his interview with Mrs Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping reiterated that the ‘Chinese were not prepared to discuss sovereignty’.29 In this statement Deng implied that the sovereignty of Hong Kong was an issue which Mrs Thatcher believed to be a subject of negotiation in the early 1980s. Yet by the late 1970s, there was a considerable degree of agreement between Britain and China on the issue of Hong Kong and China’s sovereignty had been fully accepted in the 1950s and 1960s, when Robert Black and Alexander Grantham had ruled out independence for Hong Kong, recognizing that the colony’s future lay in China. Margaret Thatcher had read Chemistry at Oxford, and boasted of being the first British prime minister with a science degree; intellectually, too, she had a different background from the British official class, steeped as it was in history and the classics. Regardless of her educational background, she brought very little historical understanding to bear on the issue of Hong Kong; she framed the question of sovereignty simply in terms of a battle between democracy and tyranny, betwe
en right and wrong. At her meeting in September, she was surprised that ‘the Chinese refused to budge an inch’, and they were surprised that she seemed to be turning her back on an understanding between China and Great Britain which had lasted several decades. All sides were conscious that China could take the colony by force; even in 1949, the British expected the communists to seize Hong Kong, and, before that, in 1945, the Americans had thought that the Chinese Nationalists, under Chiang Kai-shek, would accomplish the same end. These experiences formed the background to Deng’s rather brutal observation that the Chinese could ‘walk in and take Hong Kong later today if they wanted to’.30 It was a raw statement of realpolitik, but it was merely the unspoken assumption which had existed between the two countries, whose bureaucrats liked to conduct their diplomacy in subtle, covert ways. As Robert Black, the governor at the time, had observed as long ago as 1962, Britain was deluded ‘if we failed to acknowledge that we hold our position in Hong Kong at China’s sufferance’.31 This was exactly the point Deng made to Mrs Thatcher, though with considerably less subtlety, twenty years later.

  Mrs Thatcher challenged Deng on this point, arguing that if China did invade then the world would see ‘what followed from British to Chinese rule’, implying that the true nature of China’s totalitarian system would be exposed for the world to see. Deng was taken aback, she later wrote, and ‘his mood became more accommodating’. Yet he was shocked less by her firmness than by her refusal to acknowledge a reality which had been recognized since the end of the Second World War. In her memoirs, Margaret Thatcher concludes the section on her trip to China in September 1982 in an uncharacteristically elegiac tone: ‘I had been able to visit the extraordinarily beautiful Summer Palace on the north-western outskirts of Peking, known in Chinese as the Garden of Peaceful Easy Life. I felt that this was a less than accurate description of my own visit to the Far East.’32 The stock market was less sentimental than Mrs Thatcher. The Hang Seng index fell 21 per cent in the week after her visit. It was felt that her intransigence could jeopardize the economic stability of Hong Kong.33